Anyone Perfect Must Be Lying
by NeoVenus22
Summary: Fiona has an enlightening conversation with Trent, her group leader in rehab.  Spoilers: 'Chasing Pavements, Pt. 1'  Degrassi  mild allusions to 'Thunder Struck'  PRDT .


Spoilers: 'Chasing Pavements, Pt. 1', mild allusions to 'Thunder Struck'. (You do not actually have to be familiar with Dino Thunder canon.)

Inspiration: Jeffrey Parazzo on Degrassi: /5w7hxpb

Disclaimer: No one mentioned belongs to me.

* * *

><p>"Not hungry?"<p>

Fiona looked up into the concerned eyes of Trent, the leader from group. She realized a half-second later that she'd been picking at her lunch (some sort of overcooked vegetable medley). She'd been thinking about Holly J and what her own mother had passed along about the dialysis.

"Thinking," she admitted. Then, to be polite, she gestured at the chair across from her. "Would you like to sit?" Normally she ate lunch with Annie, an obsessive overachiever that reminded her of Holly J (only with less regality and more narcotics), but Annie had graduated earlier that week, leaving Fiona alone again.

Fiona didn't really like being alone. When she was alone, her thoughts tended to stray. When her thoughts tended to stray, her stomach started knotting. And from there, she started drinking. She didn't know too much about Trent, but it was so much better than being alone. She was grateful when he sat down.

"What are you thinking about?" Trent asked companionably, taking a bite of a limp green bean that dangled unappetizingly over both ends of his fork.

"New York," she said, not a total lie. She'd been thinking of taking Holly J there when (if) she got out of here. "I'm from there, originally. I was thinking about shopping and Fashion Week, and... I sound really shallow, don't I?" She felt her cheeks color. There'd been a boy passing through group the other day, recalcitrant, detoxing because he'd been found naked in an alley, half-dead. He was the sort of thing you thought of when you thought of substance abuse. Fiona felt like an anomaly. More like a complete sham. "Poor little rich girl, drinking for attention," she said, more to herself than to her lunch companion.

"Were you?" said Trent. There was something unnerving about his stare.

"Maybe?" said Fiona. Her therapist, the latest one, had told her that she could never really expect to move forward if she didn't learn something about being introspective.

"I don't think that's true," said Trent. "You mentioned a trial the other day..?" He wisely let the sentence trail off into a question, giving her the opportunity to confirm or deny.

"Yeah. I'm going to court against my ex-boyfriend. He..." Fiona took a deep breath, steeling herself. She'd been trying not to be a drama queen about the Bobby thing, but not being a drama queen had been even more dramatic on its own. She met Trent's gaze. "He hit me. My mom fixed the two of us up. He was very controlling. And I had to pretend everything was okay, because even my own brother didn't believe me."

"That sucks," he said succinctly.

"Lots of things do." She smiled nervously and pointed at her plate. "I should eat this before it gets cold."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No, I mean I've talked too much. It's your turn." To prove her point, she put some soggy cauliflower in her mouth.

"Well, things were pretty rough for me in high school, too. I was adopted and raised by my dad, who disappeared a lot."

"For work?" she asked, understanding all too well.

"Yeah, something like that. He was kind of... bipolar, so our relationship was really strained a lot of the time. I thought things were going to get better when I went to college, but when there wasn't anyone around to keep an eye on him, he stopped going to therapy and taking his meds. Of course, he never really wanted me to go to art school."

"You went to art school?" said Fiona, suddenly curious. With all of her troubles throughout the year (skipping class to walk on the roof, skipping class to make out with her boyfriend, skipping class to hide from her boyfriend, running away to Canada, transferring schools, failing major tests due to public intoxication, culminating in being carted off to rehab), she hadn't had the chance to really think about college, especially not seriously. It didn't help that her brother and her best friend were both going to an Ivy. That was a lot to live up to. But she wasn't supposed to think about her inadequacies, lest she focus on them and become overwhelmed again. She forced herself to listen to Trent.

"Yeah, the Art Center, in Pasadena. My dad was fine with it at first, but then his girlfriend broke up with him, and things started going south."

"Is that when you started using?" she asked.

"No, high school, actually. I was new in town, my dad was absentee, and I ended up finding a white rock that made me feel special and powerful. It was... intoxicating." Fiona knew there'd been a kid or two at Vanderbilt who'd been into cocaine, not that she'd ever really associated with them. (She'd thought the habit was deplorable. Funny how things turned out.) A rock? She delved into her surprisingly limited knowledge of drug habits, thought that rock referred to crack cocaine, which seemed a bit serious for a high school student.

"My dad, actually, was the one that noticed I needed help," Trent was saying, looking forlorn. "It was the best our relationship ever was."

"I'm sorry," she said sincerely. She remembered how lost she'd felt, trying so desperately to live up to her mother's expectations, despite feeling like she was never being noticed. She'd felt so achingly alone. Fiona reached across the table and lay her hand over Trent's.

"Did you relapse?" she asked. If he'd used in high school, and he mentioned he'd gone to college, it seemed odd he'd be in rehab now if he hadn't.

"To a smaller degree," said Trent. "Like I said, my relationship with my dad started going downhill fast, and by then I was in college, away from my friends, and getting really overwhelmed. You would've thought I'd be used to everything constantly changing, after my parents died and I got adopted and moved and everything. I thought I wanted freedom, thought I needed it, but too much freedom just meant zero restrictions. There was no one around to keep me in check." Fiona knew where he was coming from entirely too well. "There were some guys on my floor that invited me to start hanging out with them," continued Trent. "Their parties involved a lot of drinking. I really wanted friends, I wanted to feel like I belonged to a group again. I didn't realize how bad it was getting. Then one weekend my girlfriend came to surprise me, and I spent the entire visit blackout drunk. She, um, remembered what I was like, in high school, and was afraid things were going to get worse. Addictive personality, something like that. So she called up our mentor from high school and they checked me in here."

Fiona thought something seemed off about his story presentation. He'd said it all in a very rehearsed sort of manner, as though he'd practiced it. Was it a side effect of having told it so many times? Of course, he'd done hard drugs, it probably affected his memory, to say nothing of his storytelling abilities.

"And you stayed?" she asked finally.

"It feels like helping people was something I was always meant to do," said Trent. "I just had to do some really bad stuff to get to that point." He shrugged. "I guess we don't know what we truly are, or who, until we reach our lowest possible point."

"Guess so," she said thoughtfully. Fiona had definitely reached her lowest possible point. She wondered who was going to emerge on the other side of this little 'adventure'.

"So are you and your dad speaking again? Is he getting help?"

"We're looking into a specialist, but I don't think he can ever truly be fixed," said Trent, looking impossibly sad. Fiona found herself squeezing his hand again, and he turned it over to squeeze hers back. "I think it's just going to get worse, his condition, and then..."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm so sorry. That's so much to cope with."

"We all have our problems." At this, Trent retracted his hand, seeming to retreat into himself, and she granted him silence, the both of them concentrating on their bland lunch.

One last thought niggled, though, and Fiona wanted to touch on it before he left and the moment was lost. "Trent?"

"Yes?"

"You said you had a girlfriend, she was the one who helped you check in."

"Mm-hmm."

"Are you still together?"

"Sometimes. It's complicated. It doesn't always have to do with my problems, which is kind of a relief, but kind of sad, too."

"It means if it's not just you, then things aren't going to be perfect, even if you're magically better," said Fiona.

Trent nodded. "You've got someone waiting for you?"

"I don't know anymore. My... boyfriend," she hesitated on the word, not so much because Adam was transgender, but because she wasn't sure if he ever was her boyfriend, was currently, or would be again, "tricked me into going to an intervention and I told him I never wanted to see him again."

"Well, at least you know you're not the first person to ever say that. Did you mean it?"

"Yes. No."

"Have you spoken to him since then?"

"I wrote a letter," she said, "when I was doing the whole apology thing. I don't know if he got it or read it. I don't know if it'll even make a difference."

"Just worry about fixing you right now," said Trent. "Then you can work up from there." He tapped his fork against the edge of his tray. "I have to get back, I'm leading a session in twenty minutes. Are you going to be all right?"

"In the next immediate five minutes or in general?" Fiona asked with a wry smile.

Trent laughed. Fiona had always suspected she was quite charming on her own. "Somehow I think you'll be okay either way."

Trent was a respected leader figure around here, so it was really kind of a ringing endorsement. "Thanks for the company."

He nodded in response, standing and taking a step away from her. He hovered for a moment, perhaps aware of Fiona's eyes on his back, but kept on moving. Maybe he had nothing else to say. One of the things Fiona liked about rehab was carrying the burden of someone else's problem, if only for a little while. It never made her problems seem that much heavier. It was more like switching her purse to the other shoulder: a different sensation, something new to focus on before she went back to her usual way of things.

Fiona wanted to go home. People understood her here, understood her addiction and why it was important. But here, it defined her. At home, she wouldn't get much understanding, she'd get a modicum of sympathy that would eventually give way to frustration, because she'd always be an addict. But it was only a part of her, not her entire existence (she thought, she hoped), and everyone at home knew her as something more. Here, she was Fiona, an addict. There, she was Fiona Coyne, New York socialite, loyal sister and daughter, dramatic fashion genius, and best best friend of all time (and addict).

She wanted to go home and hug her mother, shop with Holly J, see if Adam would talk to her again. Looking at Trent and how far he'd come, how he managed his addiction and tried to make it work for him rather than against him, it made her feel empowered. Like this wasn't the end of the world, like she could come out strong. Or at least stronger.


End file.
